It’s hard to imagine, but each year I become less and less
prepared for it, which is why I’ve been lobbying for bi-yearly holidays for
bi-decades now.

But I can’t seem to gain much traction on that proposal,

I think mostly because people don’t understand what
bi-anything refers to.

I think most people assume that when you attach bi- to any
word it somehow connotes something having to do with sexual orientation…or a
two wheel, self-propelled vehicle...and sexual orientation.

So it’s been an uphill climb.

Bicycle or not.

Having said that, however, you probably know I’m not one to be easily
discouraged (is that laughter I hear?) so I’ve decided to take a new tact.

If we can’t go bi- with the holiday season, why don’t we just
go the other way and extend it…for about 3 months into the new year.

This way we can ease into the holidays rather than having it
all dumped on us, right after Halloween.

Keep Halloween where it is…unless of course there’s some
kind of super storm that dumps on it…in which case we can now
apparently re-schedule it to whenever…but move Thanksgiving back a half month or
even a whole month.

Then we can re-schedule Christmas, Hanukah and all the other
festival of lights for sometime around mid-February.

Okay…sure…that means we bump Valentine’s Day back a bit too.

But come on…it’s Valentine’s Day.

You know?

Drop it into May, June…even August…will anyone even notice?

I know, I know, I know….

I’m messing with tradition…but 18th, 19th,
20th Century tradition.

If I’m not mistaken this is now the 21st Century…time to
shake up the calendar a bit.

The retailers will like it…the electric companies will like
it too… you know because of the extended holiday lighting season.

It'll even
give all the cable TV networks time to program more of their endless schmaltzy
Holiday movie fare.

Maybe even produce another couple of dozen.

More work for all those B-list former TV stars.

And by the time all the festivities wind down…it’ll be
almost spring.

Not bad, huh?

So hopefully I’ve given you something to ponder while you’re
out there hunting down the next big holiday bonanza.

Well I have to admit that I co-opted Triskaidekaphobia and turned its practitioners into Triskaidekaphobites. I guess Mr. Webster is a stickler for accuracy over creative license. I tend to use Google for most of my research. Even if you get the word wrong it usually figures out what you mean and puts you on the right track.

I’m guessing you’ll be familiar with tomorrow’s word. Just have a hunch your worldly ways will kick in….

It looks like a Greek word. I "got" the tri, meaning three, and phobia, fearful of, or not liking something. But the middle part,I thought maybe you made it up. I like made-up words. You, being a wordman, have the right to invent as many words as you like. At least, it's all right with me!

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About Me

My passion these days is writing silly stories for “The
Freelance Retort”, the humor website I began in May of 2011 when the world was
supposed to come to an end. It didn’t and now I’m stuck writing these things 2
or 3 times a week.My passion before that was chocolate ice cream.

When I’m not doing this, I’m a freelance, corporate writer/director/ producer, which means—besides the many slashes—I create everything from promotional, instructional and training videos to interactive on line presentations for various corporation and health care companies. In that sense I guess you could say that I’m a “professional writer” since I do get paid to write, work from home and have lots of free time to myself. However, most of my friends and neighbors think I’m retired. Naturally, being a freelance writer who deals with the sometimes insanity of the corporate world from the safety of the creative fringe, my views will more often than not be tinged with cynicism, sarcasm and a fair share of self-deprecation. I hope you enjoy them in the spirit in which they are intended….